How can the Alignment of Test Automation with DevOps & Agile help?

Aligning Test Automation with DevOps and Agile

 

 

Businesses have adopted digital technologies in large measure to stay competitive and provide a rich customer experience. This has involved implementing cutting edge methodologies such as Agile and DevOps to shorten the development cycle and reach the market quickly with better quality products or services. These methodologies have, in turn, necessitated the use of test automation in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This is done to cope with the sheer volume of testing, especially the regression runs, which by all accounts cannot be done manually (read in the traditional waterfall model).

Quality and customer centricity – paradigms defining businesses

The success of a business is not defined by its huge turnover or having a vast portfolio of products and services anymore. It is more about the kind of quality experience it provides to the customers. In other words, if the quality of the products or services of a business is better than its competitors, customers can be expected to choose the same over others. Thus, customer experience has become the parameter to judge the performance of a business. And to ensure the same, Agile test automation needs to be implemented right from the development to the delivery stages.

Moreover, with DevOps coming into the picture with its emphasis on Continuous Delivery and Integration, customer experience has not remained a one off thing but a continuum to be delivered throughout the lifecycle of a product. However, here lies the challenge. Since creating a quality culture through test automation becomes everyone’s responsibility in DevOps, it can mean no one feels truly responsible for the same. However, by implementing test automation in the Agile or DevOps mould, glitches can be found at the very beginning of the development process. The move from manual QA of the waterfall model to test automation of the Agile/DevOps model helps in optimizing processes, enhancing the quality of the product, improving efficiency, and strengthening security.

Benefits of implementing automation testing services in Agile or DevOps testing

• Identify glitches in the early stages of development thus enhancing the quality of the product.

• Eliminate rework as glitches identified during the development sprint can get corrected immediately.

• Execute repetitive testing modules faster.

• Perform comprehensive testing and integration of products and their dependencies across device platforms, operating systems, screen resolutions, networks, and frameworks.

• Build a Continuous Integration/Delivery pipeline to develop, package, and deploy better quality products to the target environments and ensuring the service calls are promptly addressed.

• Facilitate communication within the team due to a close collaboration between the stakeholders and developers.

• Work on standardized QA environments ensuring automated deployments of products. 

• Ensure an optimum test coverage area.

• Aid the scaling up of performance and load testing.

How can DevOps testing be implemented successfully?

• By executing the quality strategy in line with the DevOps culture.

• By defining, analyzing, and measuring the quality metrics.

• By identifying a test automation (open source or licensed) platform to write test scripts and maximize the test coverage area.

Results of a successful alignment of automation testing services with DevOps & Agile

The expected deliverables if the process of test automation is implemented in the Agile and DevOps mould.

Integrating the codes: A software can function to its optimum capability only when all the modules within it work cohesively. As each module is responsible for running a specific feature or functionality, its validation is needed through test automation. So, not only the unit tests should run seamlessly but the entire phalanx of codes across the SDLC should meet the stated objectives.

Faster deployment: DevOps quality assurance based on automation leads to a faster and early detection of glitches. This helps in the quicker deployment of software in the market and earning in the process, the approval of the end users.

Greater synergy across teams: The DevOps testing strategy leads to a greater synergy among the development, QA, and operations teams. This leads to a better acknowledgement of customer feedback and finetuning the delivery mechanism even further.

Conclusion

With customer centricity becoming the cornerstone of achieving success, the products and services of a business should be tested thoroughly before their eventual deployment. This can be better achieved through the CI/CD pipeline by using DevOps testing. 

This Article is originally published at Medium.com, Aligning Test Automation with DevOps and Agile.